First of all I’d like to apologize in advance for any insensitive statements I might make (I hope I don’t though), I’m trying my best not to and I was just curious :)
I’m an 18-year-old cishet guy currently in uni and recently the thought popped into my head that I have no clue how the LGBTQ community would view me as someone who’s not in the space or actively an ally. I would more accurately describe myself currently as a “don’t care” person in the sense that to me it genuinely does not matter what someone identifies as or who someone is attracted to. I don’t know how much this means, but I have multiple gay friends, my roommate is bi and I dated a person who went as a girl in day to day life because it was more convenient to her/them although she/they told me she/they partially identified as nonbinary (correct pronoun usage pls >.<) but I don’t know if all this is the classic “but i have a black friend” argument that racists use.
To cut to the point: I’m curious as to how I would be seen by queer people in general, as I’ve witnessed both very inclusive and nice people (mostly here), but also some that said that LGBTQ places are not to be used by cishet people and I’m wondering what the best attitude to take would be.
Thanks!
Eww, allocishets. Don’t give us cooties! /s
Not really sure what you expect. Queer people generally are probably going to be more comfortable around similar queer people because they are probably safer around them and don’t have to deal with weird tiptoeing around things like:
where they may have good intentions and all, but make things a bit awkward by over-focusing on it (and also may come off as being more worried about how others perceive them than actually caring about the other people sometimes).
In this case yeah, it’s formulated quite awkwardly by me since (I’m just gonna stick to she) she goes by she/her in daily life, but online she uses she/them and she told me she felt nonbinary to some degree although she hadn’t told anyone else so I didn’t really know what pronouns to use so I thought “let’s roll with both”.
Her exact words were something like “I just go by as female because I don’t want to deal with the hassle of having to explain to people” so I actually don’t know what she’d prefer in an ideal world
You don’t have to know what pronouns she would prefer in an ideal world, just which ones she is using right now. If she’s going by she/her, and isn’t open about possibly being nonbinary, then you should probably keep using she/her until she tells you to do something different. But if you’re really that confused, you could ask. You can also always use they/them as a default when you’re not sure, especially online.
“I’ll just have a beater car because one that isn’t damaged is too expensive.”
I bet your sister has had a lot of roommates too.
Like others have said, it’s probably best for now to just use she/her in your day to day life since they haven’t told anyone else. Just to give a heads up though: most people who use multiple sets of pronouns such as she/they prefer them to be alternated. So for example you would say “she did this” or “they did this” rather than “she/they did this.”
Some people prefer to have a mix, so not constantly using the same set (eg only she/her or only they/them) while others are simply okay with either option. Since she would be hearing she/her all day, they might appreciate you using they/them more to balance it out. It could be nice to have a discussion about this with them, and give her the opportunity to try out different things. /r/transtryouts will have some examples of what this might look like.
None of what I’ve talked about is high stakes at all. Even misgendering on accident (in this case using he/him) is something that you quickly correct and move on from, as you would for a cis person. Hope this helps!